January's books

    From the top: The House that is our Own, O Douglas; The Midnight Folk, John Masefield; Mrs. Miniver, Jan Struther; The Idea of North, Peter Davidson; Miss Buncle Married, D.E. Stevenson; The Robin: A Biography, Stephen Moss; You'll Never Walk Alone, Rachel Kelly; The Star-Nosed Mole, Isabel Bannerman; Babel, R.F. Kuang.

    There's a lot there to enjoy, but The Idea of North stands out because it's unlike anything I've read, it's thought-provoking, and it's beautifully written. It ranges over literature, art, myth, history, observation to try to grasp the very subjective and almost ever-shifting concept of 'north'. 

    One of the many norths it describes is the southern shore of the East Neuk of Fife and the area around Kellie Castle; it's a particularly lovely passage which I'll quote here to give you a flavour of the book.

    "On midsummer night almost the whole landscape of pastoral Scotland can be seen looking southward across the Forth from the Law, the little hill behind Kellie Castle*. The castle garden is crossed on cut stone paths flush with the shaved grass between the borders in their brief summer depth of Celestial roses, white Lothian stocks, Cockenzie pinks, weavers' pinks from Paisley. The way out into the the trees and up onto the hill is by the recalcitrant, seldom-used back gate, beside Robert Lorimer's stone garden house. Gentle dun slopes with a midsummer scatter of umbelliferous flowers. On the tussocky plain of the summit, under the hourless light, brightness lingers on the northern horizon in a false, unwavering dawn.

    ... The castle with its sculptural, abstract pattern of stair towers lies at the foot of the hill, the garden walls in a parallelogram to catch every moment of winter sun, every benign stir of the air. Nearer the Firth are solid farmhouses, dense trees around the larger Georgian houses with their terraced gardens. Past the coastal burghs is the stump of the Bass Rock. Edinburgh registers only as a stir and glimmer in the distance far to the west... To the left the Firth broadens to the points with the lighthouses, the unquiet house of Wormiston in its dark wood guarding the peninsula, the North Sea.

    In the little sitting room in the tower, under the deep-cut plaster medallions of emperors and heroes, talk goes on as the room fills with midsummer twilight, so that the mouldings on the panels show still as wavering bands of light. Mirrors, picture glasses and chandeliers hold a pencilling of brightness at their edges. The sky outside is never quite dark; the trees are silhouetted, always with a tinge of blue behind them. And in the preposterously early dawn, the fields of green barley stretch to the blinding sea."

*See also

Comments

[Anne]

Thank you for sharing the books . I loved the description of the area around Kellie Castle as I have been visiting the east neuk for years.

[Cornflower]

You're welcome, Anne. The Kellie area and the wider East Neuk is a lovely place.

[Fran H-B]

This is definitely going to be sought out. I have his The Last of the Light and I was struck by the descriptive prose in that from page 1. Peter Davidson needs to be better known!

[Cornflower]

He does, Fran!

[Teresa]

Even the title 'The Idea of the North' evokes so many thoughts and feelings, Karen. I shall definitely be searching this book out, thank you.

[Cornflower]

You're welcome, Teresa.